Special Report: Hu Jintao visits 4 Asian nations, attends APEC Meeting

    HANOI, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies pledged here Sunday that they will spare no efforts to promote free trade and investment in the region.

    "We agreed to make every effort for realizing APEC's goals of free and open trade and investment," the leaders said in the Hanoi Declaration issued at the end of their annual meeting in the Vietnamese capital.

    The leaders said that they reaffirmed that support for the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), also dubbed Doha Round, "remains a top priority of APEC," vowing to spare no efforts to break the current deadlocks.

    They also acknowledged the role of high-quality regional trade agreements (RTAs) and Free trade agreements (FTAs) in achieving trade liberalization and the need to ensure the two kinds of trade arrangements lead to greater trade liberalization and genuine reductions in trade transaction costs.

    The leaders acknowledged that there are practical difficulties in negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific at this time.

    "It would be nonetheless timely for APEC to seriously consider more effective avenues towards trade and investment liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region," they noted.

    They said that they would instruct officials to undertake further studies on "ways and means to promote regional economic integration, including a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific as a long-term prospect, and report to the 2007 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Australia."

    At the summit, the leaders also endorsed the Hanoi Action to implement the Busan Roadmap towards the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010 for industrialized economies and 2020 for developing economies.

    The action plan is comprised of specific measures, schedules and capacity building initiatives.

    The leaders emphasized the importance of measures aimed at reducing business transaction costs, saying that APEC has met the Shanghai target, set in 2001, of a five-percent reduction in trade transaction costs by 2006. "We welcomed the framework for the next Trade Facilitation Action Plan, targeting a further reduction of trade transaction costs by five percent in the APEC region by 2010," they said.

    APEC currently has 21 members: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, China's Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.